MULTICHARTS 7 BETA 1 RELEASE

MULTICHARTS 7 BETA 1 RELEASE – WHAT’S NEW

MultiCharts 7 is a significant improvement from previous versions and it’s unique in a number of ways – we introduced manual trading capabilities which makes MultiCharts a complete trading platform, event processing is now absolutely accurate, almost all issues raised by users were fixed, and we addressed many other minor issues. The vision for MultiCharts 7 was to create the most accurate, the most stable, and the most useful platform to date. Many issues were reported by our users through the online Project Management system, we were able to make the platform better for everyone thanks to the input of our reporters. Below you will find a more detailed description of major and minor improvements contained in this beta release of MultiCharts 7.

ABSOLUTE ACCURACY OF EVENT PROCESSING

Accurate event processing is essential a reliable trading application. One of our goals was to achieve absolute accuracy when it comes to event processing, and we have accomplished our goals. There were three major projects that were part of achieving complete accuracy – Tick Sequence ID, TickCache, and synchronization of updates to all data series.

TickID – events (ticks) are processed by MultiCharts upon their arrival are now sequence-stamped with a unique number, which allows MultiCharts to track ticks in the exact order they arrived. Data providers commonly provide one-second timestamps, while there may be 50 ticks in a second – there is no way to tell which tick arrived first based on historical data. This issue only affected calculations based on two data series, and it happened because timestamp information for ticks provided by data feeds was not detailed enough. In a sense, TickID is like having millisecond or microsecond resolution, because it lets you know which tick comes first. However, a unique sequence ID is better than even the smallest timestamp, since it’s more accurate for event processing.

TickID stamps allows MultiCharts to perfectly align data series on the time scale, since all tick bars now have a unique sequence number. If you have two data series – 4-tick and 8-tick, you will see one 8-tick bar for each two 4-ticks bars aligned perfectly above each other on historical data and in real-time. Intuitively, this appears like a simple thing to do, yet it’s difficult to accomplish in terms of complex event processing.

WARNING – MultiCharts only sequence-stamps ticks received in real-time, which it then stores in the local database. Data providers give less detailed data, so if you reload your data, all of your sequence-stamped ticks will be erased and replaced less accurate information received from the data feed. After a reload, you will see less accurate event processing (as in previous versions of MultiCharts) until new ticks are collected and sequence-stamped.

TickCache – it’s an internal recording of all arriving ticks, which prevents MultiCharts from missing ticks in real-time. This would happen previously on any resolution: 100 ticks would come, but MultiCharts would only calculate scripts on 97 of them, since they arrived too quickly. TickCache ensures absolute accuracy when it comes to processing incoming ticks – no ticks will be missed. (http://www.multicharts.com/pm/viewissue.php?issue_no=MC-155)

Calculations of indicators and strategies are now always accurate since no ticks are missed. You will see the same calculation results on historical data as you would in real-time.

Synchronization of updates to all data series – all bars across all series of the same symbol now receive updates status at exactly the same time, which makes multi-timeframe calculations completely precise. Previously, if you had two data series of the same symbol, the first data series would be updated, and only then the second one, which gave them different values for a very short time. Indicators and strategies during this time would produce incorrect results. This problem is solved once and for all with the introduction of sync updates to all data series. Users will see accurate calculation results of their indicators and strategies.

“Next bar” command did not work correctly when scripts were calculated during Market Data Playback.

Issue when adding multiple studies at the same time to the chart, not all studies would open all the time.

Indicators calculated on multiple data series would not match in MultiCharts and TradeStation.

Drawings would sometimes get moved to new coordinates after switching the resolution on the chart.

PowerLanguage issue – “OpenInt” keyword, which calculates open interest, would return “0” on Point and Change charts, while it should return the open interest.

Custom Futures contracts would not calculate properly when built on First Nearest and Second Nearest contract. Sometimes dates would duplicate and the last bar would be different from the currently active contract.

Volume for a tick on a Trade data series would be generated from a difference in TotalVolume, and not from the actual TradeSize. Using TradeSize is more accurate, since TotalVolume is made up direct trades and spreads.

Speed and stability of a trading platform are very important – you as a trader depend on this tool to make quick decision, the last thing you want is wondering whether your platform will let you down. We recognize that you need a tool that you can depend on, which is why we have made it a priority to make MultiCharts as fast and as stable as possible. Because of new features introduced in MultiCharts 6, there have been certain drops in performance in terms of memory usage and processor usage. Also, other errors (like exceptions and asserts, which would cause MultiCharts to shut down) have popped up here and there. You can read below about issues fixed as a result of an extensive undertaking to make MultiCharts faster, more stable, and more dependable than ever before. Many of these issues have been documented in our online Project Management system, thanks to the users who helped us by reporting these issues we were able to address more of them. You can read below more about the issues that were addressed.

ASCII Import would produce an error if the file being imported contained date and time in a descending order.

MultiCharts would sometimes crash with an Exception in multicharts.exe due to a Windows GDIPlus setting.

MANUAL TRADING

Manual trading is made possible through the following major components:

Visual Chart Trading

Depth of Market (DOM) window

Entry Automation

Exit Automation

Master Strategy

Trade Bar toolbar

Order and Position Tracker

You can find more details in the sections below.

Visual Chart Trading

A major improvement, one of the most useful ones, is trading directly from a chart. It’s perfect for traders that need to react instantly to market changes and always see the big picture. It’s intuitive, easy to use, and provides the necessary tools to stay on top. You can use chart trading to conveniently and easily supplement your automated trading, either add or remove orders to make sure you get the result you need.

We offer our users chart trading that is very rich visually and in functionality. You can create orders either from a convenient panel on the right-hand side, or by right-clicking on the chart. The panel is organized in a clear and logical fashion, with buttons placed specifically to optimize time needed to place orders. The chart trading panel allows you to specify all necessary details for your order, including the number of contracts, type of order, order duration and so on. The chart itself is cursor-sensitive, so right-clicking on the chart will create an order at the price level you clicked on. You can also drag-and-drop orders directly to specific prices on the chart, and the orders will appear at those prices.

You can apply single orders and entire strategies using the methods described above. MultiCharts supports single orders (market, limit, stop, stop-limit), One-Cancels-Other (OCO) order groups, as well as automated entry and exit strategies. The Entry Automation and Exit Automation strategies can be applied by drag-and-drop or by right-clicking to individual orders, or to your open position. More on automation of entries and exits can be found in dedicated sections below.

After you have placed the order, it’s easy to add more contracts, change it, or cancel it. You can use double-click, right-click, or the panel on the right-hand side. Strategy target levels (such as profit target and stop loss) can also be easily changed and moved around. Strategy names are shown on the appropriate levels, so you always know where the orders came from. Some strategies also have trigger levels, which control when a particular order becomes active. Trigger levels are shown as dotted lines, and you can move them around just like any other order.

Active orders are shown in a bright color, while dependent pending orders (which wait for the active order to occur before becoming active) are shown in transparent colors. Changing the size, or the price, of the parent order will automatically recalculate and update the dependent orders.

Depth of Market (DOM) Window

This feature has been on the wish-list of MultiCharts users for a long time. This specialized window allows you to see the amount of supply and demand (ask and bid) for a particular financial instrument at different prices (also known as levels). It’s helpful for traders that base their trading on supply and demand currently in the market.

The following brokers are currently supported through the DOM:

Interactive Brokers

MB Trading

OpenECry

PFGBEST

Patsystems

Rithmic

Trading Technologies

Zen-Fire

*Dukascopy and FXCM are not supported through the DOM, due to limitations. However both are available for chart trading.

The DOM in MultiCharts has two modes of operation – dynamic and semi-static. You can choose the type you need through a right-click.

Semi-static DOM mode means the DOM window will re-center once current price hits upper or lower boundary of the window. You will receive a 5 second countdown, and it will re-center. A little bit of a technical explanation, our DOM is semi-static because it will move without input from the user (i.e. if the price goes off the screen), which creates the possibility of making an error during input. You may hear sometimes that it’s referred to as ‘static’ for simplicity, but the completely static DOM model is patented by Trading Technologies, so our DOM is not static.

Dynamic DOM mode means the DOM window will automatically re-center after each new tick (price update) received. This mode is very useful for scalping strategies. It’s up to you which mode you use, you can choose the one you prefer most.

Just like chart trading, DOM has a trade panel from which you can place orders or trading strategies. If you are looking at the same symbol through the DOM and through a chart, and you apply some strategies to one of them, you will see them appear in the other window as well. You can drag-and-drop orders and entire strategies, or apply them with a right-click. We have added advanced coloring visualization that is the same as in chart trading – active orders are in solid colors, and pending orders are transparent.

Entry Automation

While chart trading and DOM are different ways to visualize data, but now that you see an opportunity you need to place orders. You can do individual orders on both windows, but more likely you need to react before the market moves away from you. To help you strike quickly we have pre-built several popular ways of entering positions, which you can customize to your liking. There are currently fourentry strategies – Breakout, Fade, Breakout Up/Fade, and Breakout Down/Fade.

Each strategy is an OCO group – if one order is filled, the other is canceled. You can visually change order levels, and trigger levels, by dragging them around, which saves a lot of time when managing your orders. If you don’t like the new level, press Escape on your keyboard while dragging. If you have time and you want to be more precise, you can also change parameters through detailed dialog windows. You can specify absolute values for price levels, or define the distance of your brackets in percent values or points (pips). You can apply these strategies to an existing order through drag-and-drop, or right-click.

You can save the settings you like as a template so you can fire even faster. You can create up to 4 templates per strategy.

Exit Automation

Some traders think that exiting a position properly is a lot more important than entering. Exit automation is a sophisticated feature that is designed to protect you from unexpected market movements, mitigate your losses, and automate certain methods of exiting positions. It is essential for times when the market is moving too quickly to place exit orders manually and you need to react instantly to protect your investments.

Exit automation allows you to set targets and trigger levels in seconds, when you need them most. You can apply exit strategies to individual orders, or your open position, through dragging-and-dropping or through right-clicking. A big difference between entry and exit strategies is that you can auto-apply exit strategies to every order you create, so that you are protected every step of the way. More information on that is in a section below. If you have time, you can carefully structure conditions that you want through detailed dialogs, and mix several strategies together to work in a tandem.

A big advantage of MultiCharts over competing products is that exit strategies in MultiCharts can be treated individually –they are single building blocks that you can put together to create something is that is only your own. For example, you can apply ‘Breakeven’ and ‘Profit Target’ without being forced to also include a ‘Stop Loss’. This gives you complete flexibility and freedom, you can mix-and-match the strategies, and apply only what you think you need. However, keep in mind there is a flip side to every benefit, and you must be careful when you build your blocks. Since all blocks are individual, they will act as individuals as well, which means they may not transfer contracts to another bracket level when you would want them to, and so on. For people wishing to carefully structure an exit strategy with all components, we have built a Master Exit Strategy (more information in a section below).

Just like in entry automation, each strategy is an OCO group – if one order is filled, the other is canceled. In addition to active and pending orders, you will see trigger levels on the chart; the price must cross these levels in order for pending orders to activate.

You can visually change order levels, and trigger levels, by dragging them around, which saves a lot of time when managing your orders. If you don’t like the new level, press Escape on your keyboard while dragging. If you have time and you want to be more precise, you can also change parameters through detailed dialog windows. You can specify absolute values for price levels, or define the distance of your brackets in percent values or points (pips). You can apply these strategies to an existing order through drag-and-drop, or right-click.

Each strategy can be saved as a template to be used later, and you can create up to 4 templates per strategy.

Exit Automation -> Master Exit Strategy

We recognize that there are instances where all parts of the strategy need to work as one whole – a multi-level strategy where all components interact closely with one another. For times like this we have built the Master Exit Strategy, which contains profit targets and stop losses and which syncs the levels all the time. Master Strategy is perfect for scaling out of positions in a smooth manner, if you remove contracts from any bracket level, they will be automatically transferred to another level, on both bracket levels.

Master Strategy essentially consists of several levels of OCO groups, and each OCO group consists of Profit Targets and Stop Losses. You can select the number of levels that you want, and how the contracts will be spread among the levels. Master Strategy can be auto-applied as well, but it cannot be combined with any other exit strategies.

Exit Automation -> Auto-Apply Exit Strategies

One of the key features in exit automation is the ability to auto-apply strategies to every new order you create, just for the times you need to react instantly. If the market is fast, by the time you place your exits manually it could reverse – and you need to start all over again. Auto-application is an essential tool to stay on top of market movements and stay protected.

If you double-click on an exit strategy, or a template of that strategy, a green check mark will appear on top of the strategy icon. Every new order will have that strategy automatically placed alongside the order. You can auto-apply several strategies at the same time.

Pausing auto-applying is also very important, since you may wish to place an order without the exit strategies, but don’t want to re-do your entire setup. For that we have a convenient Pause button, which saves your settings, but will pause auto-applying until you re-enable it. This button will also show you how many strategies you are auto-applying at any given time. These tools are designed so you don’t notice them and you can focus on what matters most – trading.

Trade Bar

Trade Bar may not look like much, but it a very powerful tool for manual trading. First, it shows all the brokers for which you have created broker profiles, and allows you to flip through them by clicking on the appropriate tabs. Trade Bar also shows you which broker connections are currently active by showing a green light next to broker name, and which ones are offline by showing a red light. This toolbar allows you to trade from any place in the application, no matter if you are viewing charts, performance reports, or scanning the market.

Trade Bar becomes active once you enter a symbol you have in your QuoteManager, and connect to the appropriate broker. You can place Market, Limit, Stop and Stop-Limit orders from the bar, and appropriate settings appear according to the order type you currently have selected. You can change the account which you trade at the broker, order life duration, there is a convenient price selector which shows you nearest ask and bid prices, and a calculator for quickly choosing the number of contracts you want to trade.

The main advantage is that you can see allof the currently connected brokers, and place orders through several brokers at the same time by switching tabs. For example, you may be scanning the market and you want to buy some Forex lots and some futures contracts, while you have one broker for Forex and another one for futures. You can place orders to both without logging in or out of the program, without losing sight of your scanner.

Interactive Order and Position Tracker

While Order and Position Tracker (OPT) was present in MultiCharts 6, it was useful only for viewing and tracking your positions – there was nothing you could do about any positions that you wanted to change. Now, you can simply right-click on the appropriate cell to interact with it – you can add more contracts, cancel orders, or flatten whole positions. OPT is now a complete management tool to monitor your open positions, account equity, and change them as necessary. OPT can now pick up orders that were placed outside of the MultiCharts platform, so even if you phoned an order in, it will show up in the Tracker.

The biggest advantage is that you can see all of your orders from different brokers in one consolidated report and do manual tradingdirectly fromthe Tracker window. You can filter the reports by broker, which is very convenient for reviewing your performance, and keeping track of your activity.

Broker Profiles

We have introduced a different way of managing brokers, which should save you a lot of time and effort. All information about the broker plug-in configuration is now stored in a corresponding profile, which can be accessed through MultiCharts > File > Broker Profiles. You can even make as many profiles for the same broker as you want, in case you have several accounts, or you are trading someone else’s account.

The biggest advantage is the ability to trade several brokersatthe same time from one trading platform. There is no need to purchase two software licenses, have multiple programs or multiple computers to trade from. You can simply connect two, three, or more broker profiles, and place trades through each one.

GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS

A new keyword was implemented in PowerLanguage called ChangeMarketPosition(change,price). This keyword places an arrow on the chart and changes the market position of the strategy when automated trading is turned on, but does not send any orders to the broker. It can be used to artificially correct your market position if you want to. Also, when the market is updating very quickly, regular market orders may not get through when you want them because of the high volume of updates. An existing keyword called PlaceMarketOrder command places market orders without registering them on the chart or in the autotrading module, thus bypassing the entire autotrading system, and guarantees that your market order will be placed. The combination of PlaceMarketOrder and ChangeMarketPosition can be used if you want to guarantee placement of your market orders and you want to reflect that change on your chart. More info here – http://www.multicharts.com/pm/viewissue.php?issue_no=MC-14

New feature for importing and replacing protected studies, MultiCharts will now notify the person that such protected studies already exist, and offer to overwrite them automatically.

There is a new order type now in MultiCharts – StopLimit order. Currently all supported brokers except for FXCM, Dukascopy and PFGBEST will accept StopLimit orders. This order is a regular limit order which activates through a stop rule. In PowerLanguage you can specify the name of the entry you want to exit from. You specify a stop price and a limit price, once the price hits the stop price, the order will become a limit order with the specified price. Some PowerLanguage examples:

PL code – Buy 14 shares next bar 10.4 stop 10.7 limit; What it means – Enter a long position for 14 contracts with the price of 10.7 or lower with the condition the price will be 10.4 and higher.

PL code – SellShort(“SE”) next bar Close stop Close + 2 point limit; What it means – Enter a short position with a limit order called “SE” with the number of contracts specified by default (either in the settings or in the signal) with the price + 2 points and higher, with the condition that the price reaches Close or goes lower

There is a new option for the IQFeed data feed, which allows the user to construct minute and daily charts out of ticks. This option is available through QuoteManager > Tools > Data Sources (disabled by default). This feature was made available to people that wish to perform Cumulative Delta analysis.

There is a new keyword specific to the Portfolio Backtester – “Portfolio_InvestedCapital”, which returns the amount of invested money across your portfolio (i.e. money that cannot be used for further purchasing). It is a sum of EntryPrice*CurrentShares across all symbols in the portfolio.

You can now trade Manager and Trading Accounts through the FXCM broker plug-in.

Uncompiled scripts within the PowerLanguage Editor are now saved before they are compiled, which prevents losing them if the program or the computer is shut down.

Improvement for Zen-Fire data feed, users can now enter their own connection settings for the old Rithmic-based API and the new Zen-Fire exclusive API.

New feature for Interactive Brokers broker plug-in – users that don’t have Financial Advisor accounts, but still have a TWS login with several accounts attached to it, can now trade the several accounts in MultiCharts. A new account field was added specifically for this case; users can choose which chart will trade which account – all through the same IB login and password. More info here – http://www.multicharts.com/pm/viewissue.php?issue_no=MC-8

Improvement has been made to the process of adding Zen-Fire and Rithmic symbols from the command line toolbar in MultiCharts.

New feature of One-Cancels-Other order groups in Interactive Brokers broker plug-in – now all OCO orders with different contract amounts are sent successfully to the broker when Reduce Size OCO is enabled and Overfill Protection setting is disabled.

Market Data Playback toolbar now remembers the last playback speed slider placement, and applied it to any new charts that you activate, or open.

New keywords were added to PowerLanguage – *MC_TL_GetActive, MC_Text_GetActive(), MC_Arw_GetActive()*, which reflect the corresponding keywords, but which work as they did in MultiCharts beta 2 and earlier. These keywords were made available based on requests by some users.

Order and Position Tracker now has an extra column for One-Cancels-Other orders, which shows the unique OCO-group ID number.

“Clone” feature was introduced to help manage exchanges with the QuoteManager > Exchanges option window. Since data providers use many different abbreviations for known exchanges, now users can simply clone the proper exchange and change the abbreviation. This process is a significant improvement on the previous method of having to first note down necessary settings and then creating another exchange from scratch.

ARCX exchange, a common exchange used by TradeStation data feed, was added to the list of default exchanges.

OTHER FIXED ISSUES

Market Data Playback issue where the ‘Jump to Time” button becomes unavailable after setting the point “Now” and switching chart windows.

QuoteManager issue where values for columns PriceScale, Daily Limit, Min. Movement, and Big Point Value are not populated.

Custom Futures issue where after creating a СF contract with a lower case name, adding to the scanner, and then calling it from the Format Instrument dialog, another СА symbol would be created in the QuoteManager with an upper case name.

ASCII Export in the QuoteManager would fail for symbols, names of which contained invalid characters.

Trading Technologies broker plug-in issue where One-Cancel-Other orders would not function properly, certain orders would remain on the broker server without being cancelled, when they should have been cancelled.

Patsystems data feed connection issue, where a response from Patsystems would take a long time and users would receive a “Connection Timeout” message.

ASCII Mapping data feed issue where data for certain months would not show up on the chart.

Not all stored data would be displayed after upgrading MultiCharts from one version to another.

Import dialog would not appear when a PLA archive was dragged and dropped into the PowerLanguage Editor window.

Additional symbol roots were added for BarChart.com data feed.

MultiCharts with “Show Empty Periods” option enabled now does not show empty periods during market holidays, which is the correct behavior.

Symbol Mapping would not work for PFGBEST and Dukascopy if the exchange of the mapped symbol was anything other than FOREX.

MultiCharts would not automatically process the connection to Interactive Brokers’ Italian and Australian version of TraderWorkStation.

Regional settings (such as whether a “comma” or a “point” is used to separate whole numbers from decimals) are now applied to study input fields and optimization input fields.

Tick data from IQFeed data feed was limited to 30 days, even though IQFeed currently offers 120 days of tick data, if the request is made when US markets are closed.

To create Custom Futures contracts, QuoteManager uses letters and symbols in the descriptions of individual contracts to produce a unique name of a Custom Futures contract. The contracts would not create or not get saved to the database if the name included an apostrophe or an asterisk. You should be aware that you CANNOT use the following symbols in Custom Futures roots – <;> (semicolon) <:> (full colon) <=> (equals sign) <!> (exclamation mark) and <_> (underscore). More information here – http://www.multicharts.com/discussion/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8021&p=37072#p37072

DataCollectSettings.xml file, which is responsible for Fields to Collect settings in QuoteManager, is now located in %UserProfile%\Application Data\<CompanyName>\<ProductName>\, so that it does not get deleted when MultiCharts is reinstalled.

On the Interactive Brokers plug-in, a One-Cancels-Other order group would be rejected if one of the bracket orders was guaranteed to be filled when placed.

Some symbols from TradeStation data feed stop updating after there has been a connection loss.

Ticking futures symbols from TradeStation data feed would not update in real-time if the user previously requested an expired contract.

Not all historical ticks would be loaded from TradeStation data feed, some would be missing if compared to same symbol on TradeStation platform.

Historical daily data would not load back more than 20 years from IQFeed data provider for symbol INDU.X, although there is data available back to 1928.

Broker PFGBEST would send “Reject” status if user tried to cancel a “New Pending” order, autotrading would turn off, and orders would remain on the broker.

Zen-Fire API would not connect if user’s name on the local computer was written in a language other than English.

Hello,
In MultiCharts 6 Market Data Playback (tick by tick) maximum playback speed is 100 p/sec .
It is very slow if we examine large data sets. Playback only one day at this speed takes hours Will the new version of the speed increase?
Need a rate of hundreds or even thousands of times more (10000 – 100000 р\sec)